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Tips

If you love words, watch the History of English

July 3, 2011

One reason I love writing is because I love playing with the language itself. I enjoy finding that perfect word, twisting it in a strange way, or otherwise crafting something original. English is amazingly maliable, and is constantly incorporating new words and evolving how old ones are used. It’s been like this throughout its history, [...]

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The Passive-Aggressive Comma War

January 31, 2011

Image by rachelkramerbussel.com via Flickr I made the mistake of volunteering to write grant proposals for a small, local, non-profit organization.  I have a little background in what a grant needs to say, and I enjoy writing, so it seemed a natural fit to make a contribution to a worthwhile cause.  Like every new experience [...]

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Casting a Wide Net

November 1, 2010

Image via Wikipedia A friend lent me the book A Cat is Watching by Roger Caras. It’s only about cats, but in it was a surprisingly simple supposition to explain the invention of poetry – to bridge the vast gap between my interior reality and yours.  Seeing it out of context, like a sort of [...]

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“Try to See It My Way” (Writers and Negative Capability)

October 13, 2010

Image by Getty Images via @daylife “The wise man questions the wisdom of others because he questions his own, the foolish man, because it is different from his own.” —Leo Stein, American art collector and critic In an 1817 letter to a friend, the poet John Keats describes one of the qualities that makes writers [...]

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Who Is My Audience?

September 29, 2010

Image via Wikipedia Mark Twain claimed that, before he ever published a book, he would “always read the manuscript to a private group of friends, composed as follows: 1. Man and a woman with no sense of humor. 2. Man and a woman with a medium sense of humor. 3. Man and a woman with [...]

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